Yesterday I went to check out Burning Man Decompression in San Francisco. While it doesn’t have nearly the scope of art and sound projects as the main event, there was still a lot of impressive sculpture, good music, and fun to be had. And as always, there were incredible costumes. There were a pair of giant cardboard robots interacting with passersby, a gentleman dressed as a walking gold lamé shower, and my personal favorite, brainwave-controlled animal ears.

Yes, you read that right.

This is without a doubt the next best thing to actually being a colorful furry animal (for those who’d be interested in that sort of thing). I got chatting with the guy who was wearing these fuzzy orange fox ears, which move in accordance with your emotional state (triggered by alpha and beta brainwaves). Turned out that Nick Hoffman, the guy under the ears, was also the guy behind the ears: his company EMOKI created these anthropomorphic accessories. He was really excited to tell me all about them and show off the range of emotion they can convey. For example, they perk up when you see somebody cute, they droop down when you feel relaxed, and they wiggle when you get excited.

This blissed out lady will show you the science behind the EEG headset

Neurowear already makes the Necomimi, which is exactly the same thing. You can buy them at Urban Outfitters for about $100.

http://pltw.nmsu.edu Daniel Kim

Neurowear is also working on a brain-controlled wagging tail called “shippou”.

Nick

Necomimi is cat ears, whereas Emoki makes bear, bunny, and fox ears in a variety of different colors and personalities.

Narcolepticdoc

The ear things have been around for almost a year now. As far as I can tell, all they are doing is buying NeuroSky’s necomimi headsets, rebranding them, and manufacturing a line of fur ear covers.

It’s hardly that innovative, and worthy of a kickstarter? I dunno. There are plenty of replacement ear shells available at anime conventions and I’m sure on etsy.

Nick

You’re right, fur ear covers wouldn’t require a Kickstarter. If you looked at their launch page, you’d see that they’re making new foams as well, which requires new manufacturing tools.

http://gravatar.com/kayzad jgjhgjh

Seems like blatant plagiarism to me, all they’re really doing is providing different covers; which people already do for the Necomimi. I’d only be interested if they made the output hackable into an if this then that sort of format (program your phone to search happy pictures when you’re sad, switch playlists depending on mood, etc)